Hypocrasy. I am disappointed, Yahtzee.You spend all week saying nasty things about other people's games, and then get all defensive and annoyed when someone tries to criticise your own work, and it really isn't good enough.Awesome review, though, as always.

I think the whole explanation for the bullet time in the game was that said faceless protagonist was "off the charts" concerning his reflexes, said sometime in the intro scene of the original game.

I never finished the original game. I kind of got bored of the same environments over and over. "Oh, boy, another abandoned office building! More apartments! Let's go through 5 dozen levels of parking garage, and yes, there will be 2 clones behind the left-side cover and 1 behind the crate to the right, and one waiting to jump you just around the corner." Plus there was never really a reason to use your melee except the once where the tutorial said or if you were out of ammo (which never happened), so one of the more exciting points of combat got completely left out.

I'm hearing various calls for Monolith to move on - and while I can actually understand that, the catch is, I thought THEY DID. Here's the thing, article I read a while back, although frankly, I don't remember where I saw it. Basically said that Monolith had split off from their publisher and that the F.E.A.R. license had gotten carved up in the process. By some wierd, inexplicable legal-logic, Monolith had retained the rights to the story and characters, but the publishers had retained the rights to the F.E.A.R. franchise name. I suppose in the land of middle managers, such a deal might make sense, but translated for average people like me it basically means that Monolith is working on a F.E.A.R. sequel, but they can't CALL IT F.E.A.R. I forget what it's actually being called. When I get home I might root around in my magazines, see if I can find that article; but in the meantime, I did want to post if only to tell people that want Monolith to move on, they won't have to wait long. (Theorhetically, that's why some of these expansions are sucking so much - Monolith isn't actually creating them. Perseus Mandate is by Timegate Studios.)

Well, that's basically what expansion packs do over the years - serving up more of the same. So "it's the same" is not something I'd really hold against Perseus Mandate. It's not like it's trying to sell itself as a hot new IP. But yeah, the review is pretty much spot on.

Oh, and a small rhetorical question to YeOldeMunger: So if one were to pitch the name of every existing video game to Yahtzee, does that mean you'd be a bit disappointed next time he does a Zero Punctuation review?

I own fear, but even the first game is a bit of a drag. The uniform enemies just make it really tedious after a while. My system can render the old one with fair quality, settings set on high, but like many games, the graphics don't make up for the gameplay. (I fear crysis will suffer the same fate) Adding dynamic elements through programming like more realistic physics and better AI are great, but overboard textures and needless detail just suck up processing power. I think games today should be about directx 8 compatible. Now to completely sail away...toodles!

Papou:I think Yahtzee like Assassin's Creed too much, that's why I didn't do a review about the bloody game :oP.

I think everyone is forgetting that just because Yahtzee reviews a game, doesn't mean he hates it. As said, in his Bioshock review, "If my Psychonauts review taught me anything, its that nobody likes it when I'm being nice to a game..."

And I don't see why people always get pissy when Yahtzee doesn't sing praises for every fucking game he reviews. Its his opinion, and its understandable if you disagree, but the way some people react to his reviews, its like he shot their dog or something. (Note, that last bit isn't targeted at the quoted writer, just me ranting my easily portable soap-box.)

alter Egon:I think yatzee should review himself for being such a dork and reviewing games nobody cares about

I believe he reviews those games because The Escapist gives him the games he will review, he doesn't get to pick what he wants to review as he has specified in certain clips, so he just does what he's told i guess.

Its like the Escapist has a set of writers and each gets assigned a game, that's why you don't get to see 2 reviews from different persons of the same game (please feel free to correct me if i'm wrong).

Anyway, about the review: good one Yahtzee my man, just about what i was expecting of the game, good to see its more of the same.

Papou:I think Yahtzee like Assassin's Creed too much, that's why I didn't do a review about the bloody game :oP.

I think everyone is forgetting that just because Yahtzee reviews a game, doesn't mean he hates it. As said, in his Bioshock review, "If my Psychonauts review taught me anything, its that nobody likes it when I'm being nice to a game..."

And I don't see why people always get pissy when Yahtzee doesn't sing praises for every fucking game he reviews. Its his opinion, and its understandable if you disagree, but the way some people react to his reviews, its like he shot their dog or something. (Note, that last bit isn't targeted at the quoted writer, just me ranting my easily portable soap-box.)

Seriously, I don't care if Yahtzee like or not the game his reviewing. As long as he's doing it in the great way we know he can. I'm just wondering why he did a review about a game he don't seems to care about and no one seems to care about, when A LOT of big titles have coming out like CoD4, Assassin's Creed, Mass Effect, etc.

Anyway what I really wanted to say is, good job Yahtzee another great review but why THIS game (expansion s**t) over anything else?

Desetes:"Also could the person who made a ZP-style review of Art of Theft while I was away please forward his name and address to the Escapist so that I can burn his house down"

LOL

Thing is, there are TWO of these reviews.

I presume Yahtzee is referring to the idiotic northerner who did the slapdash, half-arsed copy. The OTHER one is by an American chap called GSM who - enunciation troubles notwithstanding - did a very good job.

Oh and, for my first post... I have to admit I played through and enjoyed Perseus Mandate. I love the combat. I mean, really REALLY enjoy it. But yes, the level design is just a joke.

It seemed indeed that the jetlag was pretty bad. Yahtzee really wasn't in to it in this one, and he definatly sounded different.

It's still a good review, and i agree that naming has become a major issue with today's games, but then again, that same thing can be said about the plots of movies of the last 20 years or so, it's hard to make something really original when almost everything has been done or taken already.

I do agree that maybe we could do with a different game besides FPS games, and a good RPG sounds good around now, maybe if something like a new Neverwinter Nights expansion was released, that would give Yahtzee something to talk about, and i don't mean in a bad way, those games are great, but then again, i'm a geek that loves a good Dungeons and Dragons game.

Lord Scottish:Same experience with F.E.A.R. here too. A really great game a couple of years ago but overpriced for its length and you needed a $10 million rig to run it properly. Liked the game, played the demo for the 1st expansion. Don't care about this one. It's time for Monolith to move on.

Monolith doesn't make F.E.A.R. anymore, Seirra does. Monolith lost the rights to make more F.E.A.R. games in court, and are now working on the REAL sequel, project Origin. Seirra is just making money on a popular name.

Lord Scottish:Same experience with F.E.A.R. here too. A really great game a couple of years ago but overpriced for its length and you needed a $10 million rig to run it properly. Liked the game, played the demo for the 1st expansion. Don't care about this one. It's time for Monolith to move on.

Monolith doesn't make F.E.A.R. anymore, Seirra does. Monolith lost the rights to make more F.E.A.R. games in court, and are now working on the REAL sequel, project Origin. Seirra is just making money on a popular name.

FEAR? You reviewed FEAR instead of Assassin's Creed or Mass Effect? Or Super Mario Galaxy!? This is 2 weeks in a row where really great games have come out and you review something nobody cares about!?

You're losing your edge, it's been almost a month since there was a decent game reviewed.

meh yahtzee hates everything unless its actually gd i have play portal and Psychonauts and they both are amazing i swear my pc runs better since i installed like portal the turrets say in the kindest voice ever 'who turned out the lights' soo a game would have to be a game that injected morphene into ur arm while a room full of bikini models did what u wanted

Why should Yahtzee review Mass Effect, Assassin's Creed, Ace Combat 6 or Call of Duty 4 when he doesn't have to? If the publishers of those titles are willing to step forward and potentially have their balls shot off by providing free games to The Escapist, then he can review them. (Enter the fleet of jabbering idiots screaming sell out...)

What I love about Yahtzee's articles is that the games are totally random. Each week I expect some popular title to be reviewed and each week he surprises me by pulling a random title out of his hat for review.

If you don't like it just squint your eyes and pretend he says the title you want reviewed each time he says the actual title. With the never-ending flood of cloned games I'm sure it won't be too far off.

F.E.A.R. was developed by Monolith and published by Vivendi. But they were purchased by Warner Bros. before release and they dropped Vivendi as publisher for their future titles.

This means that there is now a split in the serie. Vivendi owns the name F.E.A.R. but Monolith still owns the universe. The two expansions (Extraction Point and Perseus Mandate) were not developed by Monolith but by Timegate and are not considered as part of the original storyline.

Monolith is working on a sequel to F.E.A.R. that will be called Project Origin. It had nothing to do with the two inferior expansions to the original game, it was Vivendi's move.

Edit: sorry I missed someone already gave an explaination to that earlier.

Good review Mr. Stallion, enjoyed it - and will not be enjoying this game... ever.

To the 'Some Punctuation' retard, and to all those who thought that steaming pile of rat shit was 'good' or 'funny' in any way, shape, or form:

please feck of and die.

I've never seen so much garbage in one sitting before. That was utterly pathetic and retarded. What exactly are you trying to prove? And can I just suggest that I couldn't even understand what that idiot was saying half of the time.